Another Life
by Kyoroku
Summary: The Tenth Doctor and Rose end up back on "modern" Earth to try to find the source of a mysterious buzzing sound, and end up with more than they originally anticipated. 10/Rose with an add-in, chapters added as they're written. Please review!
1. Chapter 1  People Watching

By all accounts, it should have – and could have been, in another time or on another planet – a day like any other. The sun came up and the Earth flung itself around the broiling star at a break-neck 30km a second, leading to the heartwarming effect that every occupant of the planet who had been alive more than two years affectionately referred to as "daytime". That huge, sloshing orb spun itself about, frolicked with its single moon, and tossed itself about its sun with no real concern for whatever might have been happening on its surface.

Much less elsewhere.

Yet, somewhere in a small city in the Midwest section of the United States, of all places, a young woman sat casually sipping a cup of coffee from a battered old mug. It was nearing dusk by then, the sky turning all sorts of mesmerizing colors that even the most talented watercolor artist struggled to reproduce accurately, and the park she sat in had cleared out from its springtime fill of young children and their equally young and attractive parents. She had unquestionably enjoyed her afternoon of people watching, but the routines of the families that had filed in and out of the park were so predictable that she was sure by the time darkness enveloped the area that she could even read their lips accurately. It had become boring, but it was better than letting the depression and desperation of unemployment completely drag her down into its grips. It was better than listening to her cell keep making a delightfully bubbly popping sound every time her father sent her another text, demanding to know when she intended on finding another job, as if she could simply walk into any business she pleased and demand gainful employment. It was better, in almost every way, than dealing with anything else she put up with during her days.

Mind you, there were moments that she enjoyed her life, but they were relatively few and far between and they paled in comparison to the upbeat, exciting lives of her friends and former classmates. At 25 years old she was sure that she was hitting middle age already, and the fact that so many of her colleagues were married off and popping out squalling children made her feel even older. She was often updated about new teeth or the arrival of another "bundle of joy" while her updates in holiday letters consisted of finally getting to dye her normally black hair purple, or acquiring another kitten. She complained about how absolutely dead the job market was while her siblings and ex-cohorts praised their college educations and thanked whatever deities pleased them most for their steady, gainful employment. In short, the girl – a pretty but not strikingly so, pale-skinned creature whose hair boasted a sort of other-worldly curl to it and whose eyes could have been mistaken for five or six different colors – was discontent, and sitting in the park watching happy families go about their lives made it easier, sometimes, to forget what awaited her when she returned back to her quiet apartment and her content but rather unimpressed cats.

It was that very evening, as she rinsed her beloved coffee mug in a water fountain and then tucked it back into the messenger bag at her side, that she wondered how long she would have to wait before something, anything changed. Before she could brag about her life, and the wonderful and amazing and exciting things that she was somehow blessed enough to experience. So it was perhaps surprising to her when she realized that the park, despite the time, seemed to be making an almost mechanical, low buzzing sound.

She whipped around as though she fully expected to see something behind her, but as she had figured, she was alone and there was nothing there to explain the noise. _I must be going insane,_ she bitterly thought, her brow knitting in frustration. Her fingers lifted and rubbed briefly at her ears, perhaps hoping she could invoke the noise into escaping on its own, but as she realized it surely wasn't something that her own body was creating, or that it wasn't simply some mental reaction, a side effect from too many years of overly loud dubstep, she frowned.

The streets that made the park into a corner lot held the same amount of traffic as always, a few cars here and there but nothing extraordinary. The lights had come on by then, tall, old fashioned lamps meant to look like wrought iron with glass lanterns atop lit by soft orange bulbs. The somewhat long grass swayed about in the warm, gentle breeze and the shadows of the many trees about her grew longer and darker as the sun faded away below the distant horizon. It was a night exactly like every other night she had come out to the park to enjoy watching life blossom around her, and yet there was something so desperately wrong with the whole thing that she couldn't quite put a finger on it.

The buzz grew louder.

It was almost like bees, she realized, though it sounded like it was coming from half a mile beneath her feet and as if their wings had been replaced by miniscule watch parts. It would have been oddly soothing, if it wasn't so completely out of place and inexplicable. Even being able to pinpoint a source for the sound would have made it that much more tolerable, but as her head snapped left and right and left again, each time ruling out potential causes for the low buzz, she realized that she would be afforded no such luxury. The park was nearly dark, and worst of all, the few stragglers who remained – mostly teenagers and the occasional family with older children – didn't seem to notice the noise as she had. If so, they weren't acknowledging it in a way that she could understand or ascertain, and that almost bothered her more.

Her complete distraction made being run into by two sprinting individuals even more surprising.


	2. Chapter 2 Introductions

The trio ended up a muddled pile of people on the ground as the man ran into her first, then the woman that was following him at a close range. When the girl's head turned, she could see very little; on one side there was a mess of what looked to be a fine brown pinstripe suit and a curious pair of hi-tops, and on the other side there was hardly more than a lot of blonde hair that tickled her nose and nearly made her sneeze. Just as quickly as they had both landed on her, there was commotion, and the woman was already speaking.

"Oi! Are you all right?"

The girl frowned. That was a legitimate question, although far more puzzling was the fact that it came hand in hand with a distinctly British accent.

"I think so," she answered as the pile atop her rearranged, then removed itself. Two pairs of hands, one distinctly female and the other obviously male, moved to pull her up by the arms from the ground, leaving her facing the two - a worried-looking woman a little younger than she, the blonde, dressed in jeans and sneakers and a lavender t-shirt with a darker purple jacket atop, and a man that she could have mistaken for being in his early 30s, with wild brown hair and that fine suit she had noticed and an off-brown coat that looked too warm for the season, and the silliest grin she had seen yet in any person she had ever encountered.

"Good, good," the man replied as he reached out to grab her messenger bag off the ground and haphazardly replace it to her shoulder; she distinctly noticed the sound of broken ceramic clattering about. "Well! Off you go, then. Lovely evening, mm?" Without warning, he grabbed the blonde's hand, and for a second his expression turned distinctly serious. "Introductions in a bit. First, a little advice: might want to run." Before she had a chance to react, much less process the instructions, the man and woman had turned back in the direction they had originally been heading before they had slammed into her, and were off running again. Confused, the girl frowned, and glanced the opposite way, behind her.

There was nothing. Well, if one could consider 'nothing' to be the distinct absolute lack of light in what her mind was processing should have simply been the early evening shadows, then there was certainly a lot of nothing, given that it was getting darker outside by the minute - which, as far as she had ever known, was completely normal. The shadows, however, seemed... Well, odd. It was not something distinct that she could wrap her mind around, nor anything she could clearly put into words. It just _was_. The whole situation felt wrong, felt off, and for the first time in her life she could not help but wonder if she was actually afraid of something dangerous lurking in the shadows around her. It was a feeling she was sure she had left behind in preschool, as a tiny child, when shadows still made no sense to a growing mind and when her imagination insisted that danger lurked in that which she could not see.

She turned, and ran after the two.

"Took you long enough," the man called back to her as he and the blonde slowed down enough to allow the girl to catch up with them. "Thought maybe you decided to stay. Bad idea, that. Tell you why in a bit. First, questions. Yes, sorry about running into you, bit of a bad calculation there, my fault for thinking it'd be better to jump than just land and get out like usual. Also sorry about your cup, promise I'll replace it. This is Rose, I'm the Doctor, and yes, the shadows are a bit scary right now, but no need to worry, I don't think it's what I think it is."

The girl frowned.

"Was that supposed to make sense?" she breathlessly demanded as the Doctor and Rose stopped beneath a lit streetlight. Rose gave her a helpless smile as the Doctor pulled a long silver object from his pocket and pointed it upward at the light above them; with the push of a button it made a strange noise and a bright blue light, similar to a laser, emitted from the tip.

"This is when you say your name, and we say all of the 'nice to meet you's and such," the Doctor answered without skipping a beat, still pointing the odd metal rod at the streetlight, which was beginning to glow far brighter than any of the lights in the area ever had - and in fact, soon, all the other lights _were_ burning brighter, illuminating the street in near-daylight in only a few moments.

"Don't worry," Rose murmured in a lowered voice, a grin crossing her face. "It's a bit confusing, yeah, you'll adjust. Promise you're safe though." Her eyes briefly darted around, and the previously reassuring smile dipped into a low frown. "Not so sure about everybody else though. He didn't tell me much before we got here. Not like him. I'd tell you more if I knew more." Just as fast, the smile was back, although it seemed a mite less genuine than it had before. "So what's your name?"

"Emma," the girl replied, head tilting as she found herself distracted by the streetlights and their new level of illumination. "What on Earth is he doing? And what's he a doctor of? What's his _name?_"

"Don't know his real name, he's just.. The Doctor," Rose explained with a sigh. "And that's a sonic screwdriver. Absolutely brill, promise. Can do just about anything. You'll have more questions. I'll do what I can to answer them; I don't make any promises though. But I'm from Earth, like you... Just... Not the same year." She offered an apologetic, weak smile. "It's a lot. Better to not ask right now."

"Oh," Emma replied quietly, falling silent as she found herself unable to process the words or thoughts needed to figure out exactly what was going on - or if any of what she was being told was even true to begin with. Yet she was being faced with a couple of people who had appeared out of nowhere, and one of them had some lovely sort of remote he could use to make lights brighter - surely it was a story worth hearing. "Um, about the shadows...?" She trailed off, glancing between the two as the Doctor began to somehow use the sonic screwdriver to make minute adjustments to the levels of each individual streetlight from afar. Suddenly, she was sure she could see for half a mile if not more, down the relatively clear street, nearly completely illuminated in daylight thanks to the streetlights.

"One of those things I'll explain later," he piped up, turning suddenly back to the girls and raising the sonic triumphantly. "For now, even though I don't think what's going on here is what I think it is, best not to step into the dark." He gave them both what seemed to be a comfortable rogue's smile and tucked the sonic back into his coat pocket with a flourish. "I think for now it's best to try to get back into the TARDIS. Should still be light enough; just down the block, take a quick left, should be right there. Rose? Show our guest there?" Without wasting another breath, he turned, and began to poke and prod at the switch box on a nearby traffic light, although it was hard to tell at first exactly what he was doing. Rose, meanwhile, nodded her compliance and gestured for Emma to follow her.

"C'mon," she instructed, and off she went again, walking at a relatively more easy pace down the street with her hands jammed into the pockets of her jacket. Emma, too bewildered to argue, trailed the blonde while glancing behind her to peer curiously at the man who had identified himself only as 'Doctor'.

"Where are we going?" Emma finally had the presence of mind to ask; she had heard a word used but it had honestly escaped her as it had made absolutely no sense. Not that anything in the last half an hour had really made much sense to her at all, but everything with the two strangers made even less sense than usual. "My parents told me not to get into cars with strangers." It was a forced joke, but it made her smile, however slightly, and to her relief, Rose actually laughed.

"Not a car," she assured as they neared the end of the block and rounded the corner. "This." She lifted a hand and gestured to the remarkably out-of-place blue police call box that surely belonged on a London sidewalk 40 years ago. There was a faint whirring noise coming from it, but otherwise it was unremarkable - large, blue, horribly obvious.

"It's.. A blue box," Emma warily pointed out.

"Oi, Captain Obvious, well done," Rose teased her as she quickly pulled a key out from a necklace she wore and unlocked the door. Emma stepped back, shaking her head and frowning.

"I'm claustrophobic," she protested, sidestepping the box to try and judge its size. Her end conclusion was that two people would be able to fit inside, but not as comfortably as she would have liked, and if the door closed she was positive she would hyperventilate and pass out. "No thanks. I'll stay out here."

Rose lifted an eyebrow and cocked her head to one side. For a moment, she had forgotten what it was like to be on the other end of the Doctor's lifestyle, and as her memories of her first encounter with him came flooding back it occurred to her that there was another degree of understanding necessary to gain the newcomer's trust enough to save her life. "It's..." Rose trailed off, frowned, glanced away. There were so many ways she could describe the TARDIS but in all honesty none of it would make any more sense to Emma than anything else the girl had encountered so far; she had absolutely one chance to show the American that she was safe with the Doctor and in all honesty Rose was suddenly worried she would blow it. Usually _he_ was the one convincing others that they would be all right as long as they stayed close; it had been so long since Rose had worried about her own safety that the idea of actually being concerned by the TARDIS - much less thinking it was nothing more than an admittedly misplaced piece of British nostalgia - was almost mind-boggling. What could she say? What would make sense? Was there any chance of her coming up with the right words to convince Emma that she would be all right? Without warning, Rose grinned - the Doctor had said it so many times, but for once, it was her turn.

"It's bigger on the inside."


End file.
